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mattshervheim's review against another edition
4.0
Birkerts reflects on memory through the act of remembering; it's a collection of essays on the borderline of memoir and phenomenology.
This is the sort of book you reread every ten years or so. I have a feeling my experience of the book will only deepen with time. Like most essay collections, there were a few misses, but Birkerts' ever-attentive prose was wonderful throughout. It's a treat to read a living author so skilled at crafting a sentence.
This is the sort of book you reread every ten years or so. I have a feeling my experience of the book will only deepen with time. Like most essay collections, there were a few misses, but Birkerts' ever-attentive prose was wonderful throughout. It's a treat to read a living author so skilled at crafting a sentence.
notedhermit's review against another edition
4.0
I enjoyed about 80% of these, and didn't really hate any of them. I said to a friend that it's the sort of essay collection where I wasn't quite sure why I was reading them beyond just thinking Birkerts seems interesting. He tends to start off on thing A and meanders a bit, before finally settling in to thing Y and really narrowing in. The best essays are the ones that don't meander too far from the start and, to be honest, tended to be the shorter ones. I liked how he wrote about poetry even if I don't think I agreed with what he was writing.
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